No OS is perfect. If you're looking for utopia in the computer world, you're going to end up being extremely frustrated and disillusioned.

That reminds me of how Plato said that we can understand perfection intuitively, yet perfection does not exist, only approximations of perfection. I imagine even the electrons that determine whether two numbers are equal on a computer are somehow slightly different. Well, anyway, Linux is an approximation of perfection for my part. Slackware, and then Vector Linux, is a refinement of that.

Different ways to do so many things. Sure, it's somewhat harder to learn than certain *cough* other operating systems, but I find that the effort is well worth it.

I still don't know many Windows administration tools. I usually have to look them up. The only one I know by heart outside of the usual stuff in Control Panel is MMC from my high school days. And the shell is just awful, btw.

Frustrations and challenges have been part of my computer education. I remember my first DOS machine.. why on earth did they choose for directory separator a symbol (\) that does not have a standard keyboard location? Windows 3.0.. ah, what a crash course that was. Win95.. anyone remember trying to get USB working on that one? Accelerated graphics: am I the only one who spent hundreds of dollars on upgrades to get a $50 game to run

I'm going to sheepishly raise my hand here. For me, it was Fury3 with a joystick. Oh man that was good times. And before that, Duke3d with a Wingman joystick (y'know, the one that had the knob for turning and the lateral joystick movement for strafing? Would've been one of the first devices that would introduced folks to circle-strafing)

I'm going to sheepishly raise my hand here. For me, it was Fury3 with a joystick. Oh man that was good times. And before that, Duke3d with a Wingman joystick (y'know, the one that had the knob for turning and the lateral joystick movement for strafing? Would've been one of the first devices that would introduced folks to circle-strafing)

...I stay with Linux, specifically Vector, because it offers me a community experience you can't get with most other operating systems. Case in point: on most other computer fora, you would probably get a response like "STFU n00b" or perhaps plain indifference. That didn't happen here.

JMO

I've used Macs in a computer lab setting back in the day. I am no stranger to the little "bomb" thing (the Mac equivalent of the MS "blue screen of death"). I also had a virus eat a word-processor file I was working on!

Your response and others like it bear out your point about community versus the fraternity mentality I've found elsewhere.

I'm only new to Linux. I've been using computers of one kind or another for many years (CP/M, anyone?). I guess for me, switching to Linux is like going from a Chevy or Lincoln to a sports car which performs wonderfully for the most part but is constantly in the shop!

Because the flavor of Windows I was using was a lot more crashy and aggravating. At least Linux holds up a lot better. Debian, and especially Ubuntu were full of mysterious defects which I couldn't pin down. For instance, CDs burned under Ubuntu with K3B would not play properly in my (admittedly finicky) car stereo while discs burned under Windows, Debian, SUSE or Vector - with the same hardware - played fine.

I certainly agree with that. Please look at the whole problem before just jumping. ... ...

...Your reports about Audacity is usually one of twoproblems the way the program was compiled or a different version. The different version should not really be the case but I have seen it. Have you done any research for audio editing?...

Your thoughts (rant) is certainly understandable. If that is all this is then rant away most of us have broad shoulders.

It can be lonely not having someone to talk you through thingsas well as frustrating. In the MAC world it can be the same as well.

Bigpaws

Thank you, Bigpaws. People with broad shoulders are definitely a life-saver for this recovering Windows user! I appreciate your level-headed and non-judgemental response. It is rather lonely, knowing only one person locally who knows what Linux is about. I did Google up a local Linux users group. They won't be meeting for another month unfortunately, but it's a start.

My real-world friend knows many of the fundamentals of Linux (it was at his suggestion that I decided to try Linux! He's the one who recommended Vector to me.) Unfortunately, his primary activities seem to be watching DVDs and videos, playing games and downloading things. He has no experience or expertise even with basic stuff like printing, let alone audio drivers and such.

As for audio editing, I've edited and processed sound in the digital domain since the radio station I DJ'd for swapped our aging reel-to-reel analogue tape decks for a 450 Mhz Pentium II with 256 MB of RAM, a 6GB hard drive, and a copy of Cool Edit Pro! Prior to that, I edited sound with a razor blade and splicing tape. Once I started digital sound processing, I never looked back!

The link you pointed m to is an excellent overview of Linux audio tools.

Well, I too wish I had the perfect OS. ...Hanumizzle pointed out why I stick with VL verses some other distro - the community is by far the best.Mike

It certainly is.

Tomh38 - I posted my rant for the same reason lots of folks rant about things - frustration. I'd had a thread going about my Audacity/ALSA problems for a few weeks, and despite responses and advice from some very helpful people, and my own efforts, the problem remains a tough-dog issue which refuses to let itself be solved.

I'm not a programmer, so getting deep into the workings of ones and zeros isn't in the cards for me. I hear what you're saying about diligently diving into as much info about the new OS I'm trying to adopt as possible, though I sometimes get stuck a lot on some technical issues. I'm computer-literate enough to tell my sister that the reason her WIN XP machine won't boot is probably due to either a hard drive malfunction, data corruption due to other causes, or a bad IDE controller on her motherboard, based upon her over-the-phone description. (I do hope she's backed up her files. it's amazing how many people won't invest the few minutes to burn a disc or hook up an external HD to keep their data from going missing). But mostly, I use my computer(s) for processing sound, still pictures and audio. IOW, I consider myself to be a slightly above-average user.

Perhaps another respondent's suggestion of double-booting between VL and Windows might be the only way to go, at least for now. Film at 11.

As for perfection, I know that it only exists on television. In the commercials.

Perhaps another respondent's suggestion of double-booting between VL and Windows might be the only way to go, at least for now. Film at 11.

...

I wonder if wine (not the alcohol) could serve you well in this instance. Maybe your favorite Win application is usable under wine which would, at least, allow you to stay in VL without the overhead of dual-booting. Just an idea.

I've seen some problems in the alsa mail list related o the delta and the newer alsa releases. Unfortunately, my isp is banned because it is a spammer, so I can't send mail to the list. Perhaps you want to do it by yourself, those guys are really good, and some devs are actually in the list. I will try to end mail from another isp connection. I don't think wine or vm's can solve this kind of problems, sound will work exactly like it does in linux, and the performance of audacity will be the worst. A long shot, perhaps realtime support is not included in our kernel config anymore?

EDIT: oh!, I realized tis is not the delta44 topic, perhaps our mods want to move it to the correct place. Sorry.

« Last Edit: December 23, 2007, 05:34:49 pm by rbistolfi »

Logged

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

Tomh38 - I posted my rant for the same reason lots of folks rant about things - frustration. I'd had a thread going about my Audacity/ALSA problems for a few weeks, and despite responses and advice from some very helpful people, and my own efforts, the problem remains a tough-dog issue which refuses to let itself be solved.

All right, that's fine, I have no problem with that. I've often felt the same way myself, and I have from time to time dealt with difficult issues with Linux. At one point I had a networking card (HPNA) which should have worked with Linux; I spent months trying to get it to work but never did. So I can see where you're coming from.

But ...

Quote

Linux sucks.

OK, why does Linux suck?

It sucks because it's full of bugs.

Sorry to say it, but that's not really ranting about your frustration despite friendly attempts to help you in the Vector Linux forums. It's trolling, and it's flamebait.

All the same, I hope you manage to work out your recording difficulties. I would offer to help, but I have no knowledge or experience with what you're trying to do.

Tom

Logged

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

Sorry to say it, but that's not really ranting about your frustration despite friendly attempts to help you in the Vector Linux forums. It's trolling, and it's flamebait.

Not really. I remember saying something about Linux network documentation sucking several years ago on comp.os.linux.networking. Of course I didn't want to inflame negative sentiments on that NG (you'll know when I want to troll), I was only incredibly frustrated with the task at hand.

But let's say you're an audiophile like me and you want to do some recording. ...

I am and I can. But I too had some trouble to get my audio card and my usb->midi device working properly. I know how frustrating it is when hardware doesn't work the way it should.

How did you eventually solve the problem?

Well, for the usb -> midi device (ESI m4u) I had to contact the alsa-user mailinglist. The device wasn't quite as standards compliant as I believed when I bought it. since alsa-driver 1.0.14 it works just great though, they added some lines in the code for the snd_usb_audio module to take care of it.

My on-board soundcard (some intel "high definition" audio piece of crap) didn't quite work well with previous versions of alsa, but seems to work sort of ok with alsa-driver 1.0.15. However, to use it reliably with jack I have to turn up the number of buffered frames to 4, or I'll get xruns all over the place. Took me quite a while to figure that one out. Also, it doesn't have a master channel. This is probably because the card itself has no "master" channel.

I take back what I said about the trolling and the flamebait. After having given it some thought, I realized that there have been plenty of times when out of frustration I've said "this sucks" or "that sucks" without really meaning it - that is to say, just because of the frustration and anger over not being accomplish a particular goal.

Also, Hanumizzle is my supreme pontiff when it comes to these matters, except that he doesn't even have to speak ex cathedra, all he has to do is put fingers to keyboard. So if he says you weren't trolling, then you weren't.

Please accept my apology.

Tom

Logged

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

I chose the Delta sound card because it was a much better option than on-board sound, it worked with Linux (at least according to the research I did 3 years ago), and um,it was on sale! (I wouldn't have chosen a multitrack model, but there it was, and it was within my budget.) I hope that I can get it to work properly with VL.

newtor, hata_ph - I tried using WINE in other distros. In one instance it worked fine. In another it didn't work at all. And I agree that my sound drivers might still be an issue, as you suggested.

rbistofli - How do I reach the ALSA mailing list?

hanimuzzle - Thanks. I appreciate your empathy!Headacher - My own card seems to have lots of "master channels", but I'll be damned if I can figure out what each slider (in ALSA or GAMIX) is for. Thus far I've been working by trial-and-error. So far I can get fine stereo output (crosses fingers). Also, that "frames" adjustment you described, how does one access that parameter? For that matter, how do I determine which sliders in ALSA do what with my Delta sound card?

And lastly, but not least, thank you to everyone who responded. It's so nice to have a community to turn to when things don't pan out. It sure beats what most software firms now call "customer service"!

LOL, a guy just posted a problem with an m-audio very similar to yours, but it was just the amplifier cable

Thanks for the link.

I have found, when diagnosing what might be wrong with a malfunctioning piece of gear, that half the time, it's something dumb, like what you've described. I myself have been the one with egg on his face from not having found the loose cable, switch turned to the wrong setting, etc.!